Figuring out how to lighten your footprint and reduce your carbon emissions is overwhelming. Firstly, it feels too hard − we live in complex and intersecting social, economic and political systems that have evolved over a very long time. Secondly, we are regularly sent doomsday messages telling us that our lifestyles are contributing to catastrophic climate chaos. These messages leave us feeling paralysed. Third, we are bombarded with not necessarily credible advice about what to swap out, what to eat, what not to eat, what to buy and what not to buy… With this onslaught of information, it’s easy to feel confused about who to believe and rather helpless.

For these reasons, a cold, hard look at long-run scientific data is extremely helpful to restore a sense of agency and calm. I recently read two books, How to Feed the World by Vaclav Smil and Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie. Both are similar in approach: They offer sensible, scientifically sound and practical advice for a world facing climate change because, as Hannah writes, “We all still need to tread with the lightest of footprints if we are to build a sustainable world for the future.”

Both are committed to dispelling doomsday thinking. The facts, Vaclav says, are reassuring.

Vaclav is an emeritus professor of environmental studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He has written 50 books and countless scientific papers on agriculture, population, economics, and climate. The New Yorker describes him as “A ruthless dissector of unwarranted assumptions [who] takes on environmental catastrophists and techno-optimists”.  He has been described, too, as “an old white dude mansplaining to future generations why a just, sustainable society is impossible”. As deputy editor and lead researcher at Our World in Data, and a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development, at the University of Oxford, Hannah focusses on large problems − climate change, energy, food and agriculture, biodiversity, air pollution and deforestation − that shape our world, and how to solve them.

The books take a global view and are (mostly) devoid of political ideology. Vaclav’s tone is often impatient about “people’s poor understanding and sheer ignorance of life’s many basic realities”. Hannah’s tone is hopeful as she debunks misinformation about various end-of-the-world beliefs. With her urgent optimism, she wants to inspire action and drive change.

At the start of Not the End of the World, Hannah makes it very clear that the world has never been sustainable. Over millennia, we have hunted animals to extinction. We have cleared forests. We have burnt wood and coal. She writes, “What we want to achieve has never been done before.”

The 1987 UN definition of sustainable development is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This means that 1) we must ensure that everyone in the world today – the present generations – can live a good and healthy life; and 2) we must do so in a way that doesn’t degrade the environment for future generations. Hannah argues that no previous generation has had the knowledge, technology, political systems, or international cooperation to achieve both point 1 and point 2 at the same time.

In How to Feed the World, Vaclav explains why we farm, why we grow certain foods and not others, what we need to eat, and how inefficient the food system is. Our food system makes a large contribution to the generation of greenhouse gases: 34 percent of total emissions in 2015. About 40% of these food emissions came from agricultural inputs, especially fertilisers; 33% from land use and land-use changes; and 29% from transport, processing, packaging, retail, consumption and waste disposal.

Hannah’s book takes us through big topics like air pollution, deforestation and biodiversity. In each chapter, she takes a commonly held view (or myth), analyses it, if necessary, debunks it and presents a set of actions we need to take to fix the problem. In his book, Vaclav makes it clear that there are no radical solutions. For instance, he does not think that lab-grown meat and organic farming will save us.

So, what will save us? What should we be doing to lighten our footprints? After reading both books (and I highly recommend reading both), I took the following actions from these credible sources that are most meaningful for me:

Stop contributing to the burning of fossil fuels is the most effective thing that I, along with the rest of humanity, can do to stop climate change.

Reduce my consumption of meat. This is stated unequivocally throughout both books, especially for those living in affluent countries where people generally overeat. Humans have evolved to eat meat, and like eating it, but we can only continue doing so if the total global population eat far less of it and produces it responsibly, kindly and sustainably.

Eat more chicken than beef because, says Vaclav, “chicken needs only a fraction of the feed required to produce the same mass of protein (and hence a fraction of cultivated land, water and fertiliser)”.

To help replenish fish stock, I need to eat less fish. I have access to alternative sources of protein, so I should reduce my fish consumption. If I do eat fish, I need to choose wisely. Many fish varieties (wild squid, wild tuna, wild and farmed trout, wild sardines) have an even lower footprint than chicken.

Eat more plant-based foods – soy, peas, beans, lentils, cereals, nuts. Hannah says these foods have a much lower carbon footprint than animal-based products.

Be actively concerned with delivering adequate nutrition to everyone. Especially find ways to support greater food security in sub-Saharan Africa, which has a growing population and needs to increase production efficiencies. Hannah writes that the world produces enough food to feed everyone, twice over. Yet, “one in 10 people don’t get enough calories [and] four in 10 get too much and are overweight.”

Reduce my food waste. Really, this is the most silly thing I (and all of us in our capacities as producers, retailers and consumers) do. Globally, a third of the food produced is wasted, while a third of the population is malnourished. I must understand how much my body and my family’s bodies need (from about 2000 kilocalories for sedentary lifestyles to about 2500 kilocalories a day for moderately active adults), then grow, buy, prepare and share accordingly.

Vote with my wallet. Do my research and buy products that are responsibly produced, and have the lowest possible negative impact on people and planet. Hannah writes, “Every time we buy something, we’re sending a clear signal to the market – and those who bring products to the shelves – that this is what we care about.”

Get involved with political action and vote for leaders who support sustainability. We need policy to drive large-scale systemic change.

Pick up plastic waste along the coastline to prevent it from leaking into the ocean.

Drive less. Walk when I can. Use public transport as much as possible. When my current 12-year-old car dies, try to replace it with a small electric vehicle. Avoid long-haul flights.

Vaclav’s overall advice is to do more with less. In the final chapter of How to Feed the World, he writes, “No unprecedented gains and no untried radical solutions are required to provide the next generation with adequate food supply: we just need to keep on improving production efficiencies, reducing waste, adjusting diets, and promoting measures that reduce food’s overall environmental impact.” Hannah closes her book with the following inspirational call to action: “If you are living today, you are in a truly unique position to achieve something that was unthinkable for our ancestors: to deliver a sustainable future.”

 

• I ordered both books from The Book Lounge 
• Feature Image: The red sand under the walker’s feet contains valuable minerals, already sold to an international mining company. She has walked across these dunes to harvest wild maize on the coast of Transkei all her life. A year after this picture was taken, the area was fenced off to locals, and she will never walk these dunes again. Wikimedia Commons / Bart Fouche